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I've always been a hoarder. I refuse to get rid of things, and that goes both for the box of cables and old electronics down in that cabinet in my office and for the files in my Google Drive, external hard drives, on my computers and phone.
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When I came back to blogging after years of being in and out of it, I did so mostly because I wanted to leave social media behind.
Sure, some people never stopped. There are people who have been blogging for twenty-plus years while the rest of us were tweeting away. I admire, envy, and wish I were one of them.
Because I wasn't, I ended up carrying a lot of social media assumptions into blogging, and they're starting to surface.
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Something that has proven beneficial for me, as an ADHDer, is to isolate activities. My brain works better in single-task mode, and I stay calm and more focused. I'm also more productive when I do these things, but that's not really the point. The point is that they make me calmer. I'm relaxed when I get shit done.
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I've been thinking a lot about publishing photos for myself and my close circle, and in a second iteration of memories. The principal lines of thought are these:
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Taste dictates what music you listen to, your favorite food, your drink of choice, your clothing style, the books you read, the TV series you follow, the movies you watch — and rewatch. How you speak, how you flirt, how you react to other people. How you present yourself to the world.
Beyond that, taste dictates who you're friends with, and that's either because they match what you value, or because you appreciate their own taste. In some wonderful cases, it's both of these things.
Social media goes against all that.
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I miss email as a personal communication tool. Surely I still use it, but it is 20% paper trail for transactions, and 80% cold-messaging from companies I don't know—or plain old spam, if there's even a difference.
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This is a note from my journal that works as a constant reminder of being kind, something that's very important on my current journey. I share it here because, as simple and silly as it may seem, sometimes finding something simple at the right time can give someone a shift in perspective, and I've found innumerable things on my own path that I'm extremely grateful for.
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In its simplest form, journaling is keeping a record of our thoughts, emotions, and reactions to our circumstances. It gives us a history to revisit, reference material that would otherwise get lost in unreachable corners of our memory. I've gone back to pages from 4 or 5 years ago and been surprised to realize that I'd already lived through situations similar to current events I considered new.
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I've been vibe coding again, but this time I took a different approach. I focused on stuff whose workings I already understand. It was a very different experience.
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I never did drugs in my youth because I was too afraid, but I always had this curiosity of how it would feel to be high. I imagined pure awesomeness and bliss.
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I love headphones. I love them because music has always been my safe place and headphones were my way to carry that with me in public, except I never allowed myself to use them.
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Desde muy pequeño he estado asustado con la idea de la muerte en general, la de mis seres queridos, y especialmente la idea de la mía propia.
Aunque con los años he podido ir gradualmente y a cierto nivel reconciliándome con la idea, este miedo empezó siendo paralizante. Al nivel de ser un niño de 6 años que no podía dormir pensando en eso.
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— Hi, I’m Mateo Pérez
— Hello, I’m Axel Valdez. I just got here yesterday
— So, what do you do exactly?
— I’m a UI designer, and I also do front-end code. Mostly HTML and CSS, but also some JavaScript, usually for interaction stuff
— For how long have you been doing these things?
— It’s been like... 15 years now. Wow.
— And what do you like the most?
— CSS, definitely. I would be happy if I got to just do CSS forever.
— Alright. That was your English test. You’re fine.
That was my first interaction with Matt Perez, on my second day at Nearsoft in 2011. He kinda intimidated me at that time, mostly because I had read a lot about him on social media, and he was already a legend for founding Nearsoft, this weird and utopian software development joint in Hermosillo. At that time we were small. About 35 people including designers, software engineers, recruiters, and admin staff.
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With time, our memories start jumbling up, tangling, getting fuzzy.
I feel like I lived a lifetime from 15 to 20, then from 40 to 45 it was a blink. Some people say it’s the percentage of your life those years represent. I don’t think it works like that. I think i’ts a problem of us not being mindful of the things we live.
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With each day that passes, I increasingly remember the pandemic with a positive twist.
It was far from good. It wreaked havoc on my mental health at first, but perhaps it is a blessing that my mind chooses to retain the positive aspects and bury the rest
I miss being all day at home with my wife and my kids. Rationally I know it was difficult, especially with a three-year-old rightfully demanding attention, but I miss it anyway. Those times evoke feelings of intimacy, closeness, and profound love. Such immense love.
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Today is the last day of my 30 days without social media. These are some bullet points of my experience:
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After six and a half weeks in lockdown, I’m not anxious anymore. I don’t crave going out, and video calls have replaced face-to-face meetings very well: they no longer feel fake. I don’t perceive the screen anymore, but the person on the other side.
Habits are changing. I can’t go out to the supermarket when I’m bored (yes, I do that, or used to, anyways) or call a friend to meet at the neighborhood bar, but I took on Animal Crossing New Horizons, and as a distraction it’s a lifesaver. I’m making more music, I’m drawing more, and I play with my kids a lot more than before the pandemic.
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Before photography was invented, people could only see that in front of their eyes. To experience the rest of the world, people had to physically travel, or, if they couldn’t afford it, to use other’s interpretation of remote places via narrative or painting.
That’s why the invention of photography was so huge for the human race. It removed a limit that most people didn’t even thought was there, and it opened the possibility of exploring the physical world beyond our reach.
Today we don’t believe anymore that everything important was already invented, but we have an attitude of cynicism to every new thing that comes along. In 2017 we even have cars that drive themselves, and we aren’t excited at all.
These are two (now) very basic inventions that occurred during my lifetime and changed me forever.
Tag reflection
There are 19 posts saved with the tag "reflection".
